Non-Consensual Consent?

I recently saw the documentary Graphic Sexual Horror, and am still mulling it over.  The movie is a documentary covering the now defunct insex.com, an early and notorious internet bondage site that ran from 1997 to 2005.  The site exclusively featured female submission, with stills, videos, and live feeds, and had something like 35000 members at the height of its popularity.   The movie has extensive interviews with the creator of insex.com, Brent Scott (known as “pd”), as well as with some of the former models,  members, and staff.

At first, insex.com seems like a bondage paradise.  Cheery models are interviewed, explaining how much fun (in a super intense way) that they had, and how it was a great way to make easy money.  Scenes of the shooting are shown, during which models are extensively queried as to their health and comfort between shoots (to ensure that the during-shoot distress that they are displaying is only an act for the camera).

As the documentary progresses, however, a more disturbing picture emerges. 

Figging for Fun?

Last week, I was figged. Figging, oddly enough, does not involve figs.  Instead, it describes the action of taking ginger and inserting it into an ass (or possibly a vagina).  It is supposed to cause a burning sensation, and if you believe the, er, literature, to also cause an increase in what are euphemistically referred to as “sexual desires”.

Fourteen dates in 84 minutes

A few nights ago, I attended Poly Speed Dating, an event put on by a few hot local organizing types, some of whom also post on this blog.

The event format was, I expect, typical for speed dating events. After registration, and a discussion of how the process was going to work, schedules were distributed to everyone. Tables were numbered; for each date, you would run over to the assigned table, sit down, and start going. At approximately four minutes, a warning was shouted; at five minutes, the date was over, and it was time to sprint over to the next table. At the end of the night you turned in a sheet indicating which people you would be willing to exchange contact info with; if they also indicated you positively, you were matched up and email was sent to both parties.

Swingtown

CBS has a new television series out, Swingtown. It is billed as a show about swingers set in 1976, but it is really more about relationships and marriage in the 70’s, with a strong emphasis on open relationships. It started in June, and is running the first thirteen episodes this summer, ten so far. In a very cool move, CBS has been posting the full episodes online (here), which is probably the only reason I am seeing them, since I don’t watch TV. They insert commercials into the online versions to recoup their cost, and unfortunately they are only posting the most recent three or four episodes, so you’ll have to go elsewhere (reruns? torrent?) if you want to find episodes one through six.

Feeding the Ducks

I just finished reading Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach, and really enjoyed it. It’s a delightful compilation of interesting facts about sex, and the science that has been done to study it, and is by far the most entertaining book I’ve read in a long time.  Here’s just one example passage from the book:

The world’s most experienced penile attachment surgeons can be found in Thailand, where, during the 1970’s, an estimated one hundred vengeful Thai waives… sliced off the penises of their adulterous husbands as they slept. …. More commonly, the women would hurl the penis out the window. Many rural Thai homes are elevated on pilings, with the family’s pigs, chickens, and ducks tending to mill about seeking shade in the space underneath. It is not, oddly, the pigs, but rather the ducks, that the castrated Thai must worry about. The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: “I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.” [pp. 187-188]

Other bits that stuck in my mind include a hilarious section on uptight Danish pig farmers learning to arouse their sows (apparently there are higher fertility rates for AI when the sows are aroused prior to the actual insemination) and a very amusing section on “collections” found in people’s asses (in ER rooms). I highly recommend it.

Book Review: Jenny Block’s Open

In May, a polyamorous woman named Jenny Block released a new hardcover book, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage. I bought it and gave it a read in June, and this is my take on it.

Jenny has done something new and interesting with this book: instead of being the usual how-to guide to nonmonogamy, it is primarily a memoir of her personal journey to polyamory. And, it is an incredibly frank and revealing take on her life, starting in childhood, detailing how she was cheated on and then how she cheated on her husband, and her subsequent journeys through various types of open relationship styles to her current husband-and-girlfriend V relationship. She lays out all her feelings and motivations, and puts the bad on the table with the good, which makes the book that much more real and powerful. It was an incredible act of bravery to publish this book – even as open as I am about my life, I don’t think I could pen something that bares my inner self to this extent.